"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

During my Iowa trip, I began referring to Jon Huntsman as “Governor Asterisk,” because his support in the GOP primaries is somewhere between “too small to be measured” and utterly non-existent. He is an irrelevant footnote to the campaign, a spokesman for no meaningful Republican constituency, who clutters up the stage at debates and gets vastly more media attention than he deserves.

Huntsman doesn’t represents any particular Republican faction. Rather, he represents a point in time — late 2008 through spring 2009 — when a lot of “smart” people in the GOP seemed to believe that the Obama ascendancy was more or less permanent. The way to succeed as a Republican in the Obama era, these people believed, was to cooperate in the patriotic spirit of Bipartisan Compromise.

You can run down the list of names of those who succumbed to this nonsense: Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, Dede Scozzafava, Bob Bennett — and, while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and throw John Cornyn‘s name in there, too.

When Huntsman accepted an appointment from Obama as ambassador to China, the former Utah governor probably little suspected that the political tide would turn as soon as it did. He might have expected that he could return from Beijing in a couple of years and be welcomed by a GOP chastised by defeat. Instead, by the time he returned to seek the presidential nomination, the Republican Party had rolled to its biggest mid-term landslide in more than half a century.

Huntsman is the fossil remnant of a brief political epoch — the Age of the RINOsaurs, if you will — and is destined to the oblivion that all such creatures richly deserve.

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Comments

My Oliver Stone “conspiracy of the day” moment,
Huntsman is really angling to replace the serial lying plagiarist as #2 on the D ticket.

Pretty out there, but then what else would explain such a fool as this.

What a joke.

DaveO August 22nd, 2011 @ 4:30 pm

Is Huntsman a Republican only because where he lives in Utah is primarily Republican? Otherwise, I can’t tell the difference between him, and any Democrat. Considering how aggressive, and successful, the Utah TEA Partiers have been, perhaps Huntsman’s ran away to China to avoid defeat.

See what spending all that time in China did, he missed the entire turn around.

John Fucking Madden August 22nd, 2011 @ 4:39 pm

Ronald Paul, Newton Gingrich, Richard Santorum, and Michelle Bachmann are event more cluttering up the stage. Bachmann even got into it with T-Paw at the last debate, a non-sense candidate distracting one of the serious candidates.

RINOsaur! I love it! And if I use it, you get full credit! But seriously, I wonder if Huntsman is not the young version of Crazy Cousin John? I mean, he sure sounds a lot like him.

Anonymous August 22nd, 2011 @ 4:54 pm

“You can run down the list …” For that matter, throw in George W. Bush and his entire “compassionate conservative” big domestic government team – including John McCain for his collaboration with the Bushies pushing immigration amnesty – for setting the table for the defeatist mood.

d(^_^)bhttp://libertyatstake.blogspot.com/“Because the Only Good Progressive is a Failed Progressive”

AFAIC, the guy couldn’t get elected dogcatcher on a Republican ticket after that. Chris Matthews doesn’t even tingle that much.

Anonymous August 22nd, 2011 @ 5:11 pm

But wouldn’t that make Huntsman a stalking horse against Romney, albeit a lame one? Yet the establishment is sorta comfortable with Romney (Mormonism aside). And, in that case, Huntsman would have been on our side, worthless as he is.

I see Huntsman more as My Little Pony rather than as a stalking horse. His Chinese distributors took too long to release the toy and he was out-of-style by the time he hit the American market.

That explains the liberal bloggers, who seem to have all contracted a case of Moaning Huntsman today. Apparently, he’s one of the “good” Republicans. Heck, a few of them have even said they’d vote for him over Obama!!! How could we go wrong?

Jon Huntsman would be an improvement on Obama — but that’s a low bar to clear. Furthermore, the main power of said improvement, were he elected president as a Republican, would be in the eyes of those who think Obama’s worst offense was to push the unsustainable politics of the ruling class just a little bit too hard.

If he ran as a Democrat they’d choose Obama. I believe Huntsman thinks that if he got the nominations he’d be the compromiser the great muddled middle has been pining for. If any of that were true his existence might have a purpose, the fact that there is no possibility of him getting the nomination demonstrates his inability to maintain contact with reality. Perhaps he should write about Sci-Fi rather than run on it.

[…] She took his statements from a Sunday talk show and packaged them up into a talking points memo.Stacy McCain pointed out how irrelevant Huntsman is in the whole scheme of things.When Huntsman accepted an […]

What in the hell are you talking about? Pawlenty spent half of his time at the debate attacking Bachmann. She just defended herself. And I might add, she kicked his ass without even half trying. If he had been smart he would have stuck to his typical campaign rhetoric and put her to sleep.

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